Expert: Eileen Cronk - 1/16/2005

Question
Hello,

I am refinishing a nice duncan phife style table that had been previously refinished.   After using a comercial stipper and getting all of the old finish off, the surface wiped down with lacquer thinner and dried througly I was ready to stain it.  I selected a red mahongony oil based stain from Olympic, but after applying and letting it dry thourgly, I found the color much to red.   I went back to the store and found a red mahogony by oil based stain by Minwax that was much closer to what I was looking for.    I applied the stain right over the previous stain and it looks great with one exception, there is a ring about 4 inches in diameter that appears to have absorbed more of the stain as it is slightly darker.    At this point, my guess is I am most likely out of luck short of somethign radical like bleaching or trying to sand the mahogany veneer(ugh)  It's not extremely noticiable, so I am thinking of living with it.  Any ideas of what type of damage would cause the would stain to absorb more in that area and why it didn't show up with the first stain?

Thanks

Answer
Hi Mike
Nice to hear from you.
So sorry this has happened after all your work.
The thought that comes to my mind is this was an existing oil ring of some kind, and was not entirely removed with the first refinishing, and your refinishing.
Perhaps this damage was the reason for the first refinishing?
If this was my project, I would use the stripper on the top to remove as much of the stain as you can, then a real good scrub with varsol(paint thinner) using a steel wool pad as a scrubber.
I have never heard of using laquer thinner for a rub down unless the finish was laquer to start with, but obviously the finish responded to paint stripper so we will assume the finish was oil based.
I have certainly removed some laquer finishes with paint stripper, but believe me I have come across many laquer finished that would not budge with paint srripper.
I would sand this mark (gently)only as a last resort, and on a mahogeny veneer table top bleach would not be an option I would consider.
Not trying to boggle you with info Mike, but some of this may be useful on other projects.
Please get back to me if there is any more questions
Regards
Eileen